About Me

Gregg Walker is a Harlem Resident and 1997 graduate of Yale Law School who worked as an investment banker for 9 years and was the Vice President of Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions at Viacom for 3 years. Gregg served as the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Sony from 2009 to 2016, and he launched his own private investing firm in July 2016 (www.gawalker.co). Gregg was chosen in 2010 by Crain's as one of NYC's 40 Under 40 Rising Stars (http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/40under40/profiles/2010/gregg-walker). Gregg is a Deacon at Abyssinian Baptist Church and served as the chairman of the Board of the Harlem YMCA. He has served on the Boards of movie studio MGM and music publishing companies Sony/ATV and EMI Music Publishing. He is also a Board member of Harlem RBI and Derek Jeter's Turn 2 Foundation. He is a former Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a representative of the US at the 2002 Young Leaders Conference of the American Council on Germany. Gregg is also a member of many other foundations and community organizations.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Bloomberg Supports Racially Exclusive Elite High Schools

Mayor Bloomberg voiced support for the racially unbalanced admissions results at NYC's most prestigious public high school. Black and Latino students are nearly completely absent from those schools.

Admission Testing

Our city's most elite public high schools use a single 2.5 hour admission test that is similar to the SATs to select students. The score on that single test is the only input for admission to these special schools.

Bloomberg made other offensive comments, including his response to concerns that affluent families are paying for tutoring: "We have tutoring for all our kids. It’s called the public school system. We do it five hours a day, roughly five days a week."

Bloomberg's support for the current regime shows his lack of character. We need to demand that he does better.

2 comments:

For what it is worth, his position is not a character issue. It is his flippant response to a legitimate question regarding equitable access to the best education possible in a public school setting that is problematic. There is problem, but it is not the test itself.

The problem is the quality of the K-7 learning environments throughout the city. Kids are taking the test in the 8th grade. If they don't have an excellent base of knowledge at that point, they won't pass the test.

The Mayor's lack of character emerges in his support for a regime that uses tax dollars to provide an elite education while essentially excluding the two largest ethnic groups in the public schools. Adding burdens to the underprivileged is a character flaw, and the Mayor has consistently chosen such a path.